The Gift of Sabbath Rest

“The Gift of Sabbath Rest”

Message @ Jericho Ridge– Sun, Feb 28 2021 (Series: Rhythms: Spiritual Practices)

Can you identify with that video?  At least the first part?  I know I can.    Hello, friends.  My name is Brad and I’m part of the teaching and leadership team here at Jericho Ridge. As we stand at the end of the month of February, I am reminded yet again by how much has changed in the past year! 

The level of output is up and to the right for many of us as we juggle more and work to stay of top of more.  More complexity in our workplaces as we figure out things like remote team meetings, reduced staffing, new protocols.  There’s more difficulty with respect to childcare because kids are home more and you are trying to get things done you used to do when they were at school! 

Some of you are nurses but you did not sign up for COVID wards or some of you are retail workers and you now go into your place of employment under the complex conditions brought on by a global pandemic.  Some of you are in sales and your level of effort needed to make the same amount of money has gone way up. 

Even simple things take more effort – now we have to worry if we are going the right way down the aisle at the grocery store.  Or thinking about how we thank and appreciate people or stay in touch with aging loved ones or how we move into a new home when friends can’t come and help you pack up and move in. 

And the list of things big and small goes on and on. Many of us are working harder than ever emotionally, mentally, physically, spiritually just to keep our heads above water.  And it’s getting frankly, tiring.  

When we are faced with more challenges, which we certainly have been as a church and as individuals this past year, I know what my response is.  I grew up in a family of entrepreneurs and business people and as challenges mounted, the response has always been dial up the work ethic. 

I have in me some good ol fashioned Prairie-boy, Protestant work ethic deep in my bones.  And if things get harder, my immediate response is “I got this. I can just work harder.”  I will dial up my level of output to meet a new challenge.  And certainly there is a time and place for that kind of response and I’ve seen many of you rise to many herculean challenges over this past year. 

But there is also a shadow side to this response.  The danger comes when my internal messaging system begins to tell me that I have to be productive in order to be valuable.  That my worth is connected to my work output.  I know for me this can lead me to become consumed with “shoulds’ and “oughts” and for me to feel like I am not doing enough, even with a dialed-up output.  Life pre-COVID was stressful but life during COVID can be downright exhausting!   

But what if I told you that there was an antidote for this kind of unhealthy work-life imbalance?  Not a quick-fix remedy, per say, but a rhythm of life, that if you put it into practice would help all of us who feel tired, worn out?  This rhythm of life is an ancient one that is as vital for today’s high-tech, high-stress world as it has even been. 

We’re in a teaching and exploration series on Sundays here at Jericho in which we are unearthing and putting on the table a few pivotal spiritual practices that can help you and I establish health in all aspects of our lives.  We talked two weeks ago about developing a rhythm of fasting.  If we were in person, I’d pause and ask you how you are doing with that.  But, well, you know… COVID!  Then last week, Meg and I talked about the rhythm and discipline it takes to belong and to lean in to life in Christian community. 

Today, I want to introduce or re-introduce you to a rhythm of work and rest called Sabbath.  Sabbath, is a term that comes from the Hebrew word “shabbath” which means to stop or to cease or to rest.  A Sabbath is a 24 hour period in which you cease from paid and unpaid work in order to delight in God and in our relationships with others and with creation. 

If you have travelled to Israel, you will know that this is still in observance today: it begins Friday night at sundown and continues till Saturday evening.  Seventh Day Adventists still hold fast to the Sabbath as a Saturday.  The early Christian movement in the first century picked this up but moved it from Saturday to Sunday because they wanted to link it in with God’s act of raising Jesus from the dead and making all things new. 

Dallas Willard in his book The Great Omission, talks about how Sabbath is perhaps one of the hardest things for us to put into practice in the modern world.  It is difficult to “Just make space. Attend to what is around you. Learn that you don’t have to do to be. Accept the grace of doing noth­ing. Stay with it until you stop jerk­ing and squirming.” 

I find myself highly uncomfortable with and often out of practice of the idea of a Sabbath.  Yet the invitation to sabbath rest appears in every section of the Bible, 104 times in the Old Testament alone.  It’s origin and practice is both easy and hard to understand and to live into.  But it is amazingly worthwhile to try.  Because it is about so much more than a day off.  It is fundamentally about cease striving and remembering that God is in control.  It is about trust as much as it is about time. 

Just like we did last week in our discussion of community, we are going to trace the theme of Sabbath rest through the Scriptures and then we’ll touch down in the life of Jesus and then talk about application for you and I in our daily lives.  So I invite you to join me on a journey of unlocking the power and potential of the gift that is the sabbath. 

While perhaps the most familiar occurrence of the Sabbath is in the Ten Commandments, we are going to start in Genesis.  Because we see in the Creation account an important principle around rhythms of work and rest.  In Genesis 1, we see God working and creating.  And then, at the start of chapter 2, the author says in 2:2 “On the seventh day God had finished his work of creation, so he rested from all his work. 3 And God blessed the seventh day and declared it holy, because it was the day when he rested from all his work of creation.”

From the very start, a rhythm of working and resting was modelled by God – who has all power, all knowledge and all capacity. So Sabbath is not about simply unplugging so we can re-charge and get out there and get back at it again.  Because God would have had no need for that.  So what is up with God taking a day off to rest when God doesn’t need rest? 

But here’s an intriguing thing to think about…  If you follow the plotline, humanity was created just prior to this occurrence.  So the very first thing that human being experienced was God at rest.  This is one of the reasons why the sabbath is oriented to begin the first day of the week – the notion that we work out of a place of restedness, not visa versa where we stumble across the finish line of a week and collapse in exhaustion.

Here’s the principle we see in this passage: Sabbath rest is not some kind of Divine reward for your hard work.  Rich Villodas says it this way “Sabbath keeping might be the greatest sign of grace because it’s while we are intentionally accomplishing nothing that God loves us.”  

Friends, Sabbath rest is not something you earn, it is a gift that you receive from a loving and gracious God who modeled this for us in the very act of Creation.  We can tend to think of rest as a reward for our hard work, but in the original pattern of things, humanity rested first, then began our vocational and human work out of the outflow of this day of rest with God. 

Our next snapshot of Sabbath is with the ancient people of Israel.  After they are liberated from over 400 years of slavery in Egypt, they receive from God a patterns for living together in the form of laws, including the 10 commandments.  And commandment #4 is the one with the most commentary.  Listen to how it reads in Exodus 20:8 and following:

Remember to observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. 9 You have six days each week for your ordinary work, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath day of rest dedicated to the Lord your God. On that day no one in your household may do any work. This includes you, your sons and daughters, your male and female servants, your livestock, and any foreigners living among you.

11 For in six days the Lord made the heavens, the earth, the sea, and everything in them; but on the seventh day he rested. That is why the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and set it apart as holy.”

Slaves are defined by what they produce so this is a group with a deeply unhealthy and distorted relationship with work.  But now the people have been liberated but there is internal mental and emotional and spiritual work to be done to get them to de-link the notion of productivity from their value or worth. To move them from valuing production to valuing presence. 

God says to the ancient Hebrews: “I want you to live out of a place of right relationship with Me. Rest. Set aside time in the rhythm of each week where you de-prioritize production and you practice being present. This will help remind you that you are loved and valuable to me not because of what you produce but because of who and whose you are.”  The invitation of sabbath is for us to be present with God, present with others in your life in a rich and meaningful way and present to your self and your needs. 

This is hard to do with the pull and push of modern schedules.  Many of us live and work in industries and professions where 24-7 has become the norm. You are always on call, always preparing the next lesson. Always responding to clients. Always caring for kids.  But there something that happens to us when we practice Sabbath-keeping. 

I want you to hear a story from my friend Joel, in his own words.  Joel is in an industry where your income is directly linked to your output – so it is a hard one to set any boundaries with respect to breaks of any kind.  But several years back, Joel attempted an experiment in Sabbath keeping, and,.. well… I’ll let him tell it J

JOEL – sabbath Story

Thanks, Joel.  I appreciate you sharing your journey with us and being authentic about how you still struggle with this.  I also find this one of the hardest of the 10 commandments to keep!  One things that struck me about Joel’s story is how practice Sabbath actually reshapes our identity.  Remembering the sabbath, keeping it holy, actually helps us break off an idolatrous relationship with work.  The Sabbath reminds us that we are more than we produce.

I love what author Rich Villodas says in his new book “The Deeply Formed Life”: “Sabbath is an invitation to a life that isn’t dominator or distorted by overwork…. We keep Sabbath not because it makes us more productive at work but to resist the idol of productivity. We are more than what we produce.”  Sabbath re-shapes our identity because it reminds us that you are more than your job title.    

But as with any good gift, we as humans can distort and manipulate it.  And we see this with the concept of Sabbath.  It crept slowly from a gift to be enjoyed till the time we enter the intertestamental period, it has become a set of rigid legalistic structures that are to be adhered to at all costs.  Jewish rabbinical literature developed 39 categories of items that constituted work and there was a longer and longer list growing all the time.  As new technologies got added, the Jewish legalism around Sabbath grew – if you are a modern Jew, you can’t operate an elevator or live-stream a religious service on the Sabbath – that’s work! 

Now to some of you, that kind of legalism might actually sound familiar.  You may have grown up in a setting that was religious and where there were all kinds strict rules about what could and couldn’t happen on Sundays.  You had to stay in your church clothes, or not shop on Sundays even if you wanted to. 

In 1906, Canada’s parliament passed the Lord’s Day Act which was pushed for by Presbyterians and Methodists interested in a creating boundaries that could help reduce the opportunities for people to fall into sin by breaking the fourth commandment.  Some of you are too young to recall this but these laws held sway and stores were closed one day per week until 1985 when the case went all the way to the Supreme Court. 

I can remember living in Ontario and after that ruling the grocery store across the street from our Christian school unfurled a large “Now Open on Sunday” sign to which the church responded with a larger, bigger banner saying “Been Open On Sunday for Years!”  Ah the culture wars J    

But as with all aspects of our lives, as Jesus-centred people, we want to look to what Christ models for us and invites us into engagement with.  And here we see a bit of a surprise.  In reading the gospel accounts, we see that Jesus travels, heals, teachers and eats on the Sabbath – all of which was frowned upon by the religious people of His day. 

And in doing this, Jesus is working to help both his disciples, their critics and also us see the architecture that undergirds the Sabbath.  As with many things, Jesus wants to help us understand that Sabbath keeping is not about getting the exact regulations right, it is about getting relationships right. 

Look with me at Mark 2:23-28.  In this chapter, Jesus has really been pushing the envelope.  He’s been healing people on the Sabbath, calling outsiders to follow Him, He’s been talking about fasting and then he and His disciples get into trouble over what appears to be clear breaking of Lord’s Day Laws!  Look with me at Mark 2 starting in verse 23:  

“One Sabbath day as Jesus was walking through some grainfields, his disciples began breaking off heads of grain to eat. ²⁴ But the Pharisees said to Jesus, “Look, why are they breaking the law by harvesting grain on the Sabbath?”

²⁵ Jesus said to them, “Haven’t you ever read in the Scriptures what David did when he and his companions were hungry? ²⁶ He went into the house of God (during the days when Abiathar was high priest) and broke the law by eating the sacred loaves of bread that only the priests are allowed to eat. He also gave some to his companions.”

²⁷ Then Jesus said to them, “The Sabbath was made to meet the needs of people, and not people to meet the requirements of the Sabbath. ²⁸ So the Son of Man is Lord, even over the Sabbath!”

In this text, Jesus establishes an important relationship with Sabbath.  He both clarifies it and also fulfills it and redefines it.  He helps us better understand who and what the Sabbath was made FOR.    

While the legalist impulse is to make and keep a set of rules (You can eat grain but you can’t harvest grain on the Sabbath!) Jesus returns the conversations to a discussion the purpose of this day of rest.  The Sabbath was made to meet the needs of people.  So we have to ask “what need that is shared by all of us as human beings did God design this rhythm of life to meet?”

Labouring 6 days and not 7 meets our need for rest!  We are not robots who can go and go and go and go. Pausing for a period of time each week is a gift that is designed to serve and bless us.  This gift of rest a wonderful privilege, it is a benefit NOT a law to observe, a task to power through or a drudgery to endure.  The Sabbath is a frame of mind and heart to enter into.     

Pastor and Author Tim Keller says that “The purpose of Sabbath is not simply to rejuvenate yourself in order to do more production, nor is it the pursuit of pleasure. The purpose of Sabbath is to enjoy your God, life in general, what you have accomplished in the world through his help, and the freedom you have in the gospel—the freedom from slavery to any material object or human expectation.”  

This is why if we just live by a list of things to avoid doing on whatever day makes sense for you to rest on, you might end up missing the point of the Sabbath as you work so hard to keep all your human-made rules.  The Sabbath is about learning to live freely and lightly in the midst of a world that is always pressing us to produce and be more.      

So, where do we go from here?  Well let’s get practical since this series is all about practices.  What might it look like to keep Sabbath for you? 

I think one aspect to keep in mind is starting small.  Sarah Bessy in her Fieldnotes newsletter this past week had a little piece where she said this:

“Try to carve out the practice of intentional rest, once a week, one day, even one afternoon when you radically care for your soul by stepping back from the expectations–external and internal–a day to pull over to the side of the highway, and go for a walk in the field you’re always driving by… You are allowed to take a day off from it all, to rest and renew, to worship, to press pause.

It’s permissible to stop. To take a step off the merry-go-round of our culture’s expectations and determination to pretend that everything is fine and we must be productive to be valuable. It’s permissible to go to bed on time and sleep well. And to laugh at the days to come. It’s okay to shut off the computer, turn your phone to silent, and let the constant email pile up, forget your Facebook messages for a day (or a week).”

I love this idea of staring small.  Maybe carving out an afternoon.  This is a counter-cultural revolution.  But be warned that as you do this, you will likely feel some resistance.  Your Protestant work ethic with a healthy dose of evangelical hero complex will raise its head and you’ll likely feel uncomfortable.  There will come racing into your brain a whole realm of things that remain undone.  I know I feel this when I plug in my phone on Friday night.  Oh, just one more email.  If this is you, I want you to notice this, name it, and gently press through it.  Be kind with yourself as you work your way into this practice.  Do some experimenting till you find some things that work for you and for your family.   

I know for me, as a pastor, Sundays isn’t a great day for a Sabbath J So Saturdays has become the day for me.  I slow down, I sleep in.  I have taken up a new hobby that surprised my wife – doing the crossword in the Globe and Mail. We go for a walk some days. We read. We tidy the house up a bit, I go for a long run. Saturday feels like a day to breathe. 

I want to say that Sabbath will look different in each era of your life.  That is normal and OK.  For those with little kids, it’s not like you say “OK, my break from unpaid work begins now – feed yourselves little mouths!”  That was hard season to Sabbath in!  Maybe make it into a family experiment / experience. 

I know Jessi and Pastor Jenna have some intentional practices – they set aside times for board games and connection with friends.  I know people who take a digital sabbath for one day.  Your Sabbath may not look like Joel’s or Meg’s or mine but I want to challenge you to play around with this practice a bit.  Between now and the time we are together next week, what is your next step?  What is one act you can do to remember the Sabbath day?  To step into the joy and delight that God is setting out for us. 

Author Mark Buchanan says in his book “The Rest of God” reminds us that “Sabbath-keeping is . . . where we think with holy imagination about how the arc of our moments and hours and days intersects with eternity.”  We get to enter into the rest that God offers to us – not just someday, or when COVID lifts or when you get a week’s holiday.  But today. Now. This week.  In your everyday,  moments of everyday life.  The Sabbath is a beautiful and holy gift – but you and I have to slow down and choose to receive and live into it more fully.

As we transition into a time of responding to God in song, the team is going to lead us in a new song called “PEACE”.  This song is an invitation to live more fully into the peace that God offers to each of us amidst the storms of life, the thoughts in our minds and the chaos of our schedules.

And if the peace of God is something that is new to you and you want to step more deeply into that today, I want to invite you to reach out and take that next step with God of saying “yes” to Jesus.  You can do that by reaching out to our team and emailing or by responding on our church Online interactive platform to the invitation that is coming up now on your screen. 

There is a peace that comes not merely from a rhythm of life that is rightly aligned, but a heart that is fully surrendered.  Let’s respond together.

Benediction:

Friends, our benediction today comes from Canadian pastoral theologian and poet Carol Penner who writes on the website Leading Worship:

Lord, 

"thank you for employment, for salaries and paycheques,
for the chance to labour and do our best.
Help us to remember that the work you give us to do, Lord
is not always work that the world values or pays for.
Bless our unpaid work of caregiving, whether for babies or children,
adults with disabilities, or seniors who need help.
Focus our eyes on the work that you value above all;
loving our neighbour, caring for the lowest and the least.

We ask for your forgiveness for the times we abuse the gift of work.
We give ourselves all the credit,
not acknowledging what we owe to you and to the efforts of others.
Sometimes we let work become a dictator.
We let it fill empty spaces in our lives

which should be filled with other things.
We neglect people we love because of our work.

Help us, God, to find You in our work, to look for You in our work.
Help us as we seek a balance of work and play.

Thank you for giving us the Sabbath where we can rest,
where we can pause and say thank you
to the One whose work we are,
to the One whose work we do.
Amen."

Thanks for being with us. See you next weekend where Kevin O’Coin will explore the spiritual practice of simplicity.